Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will make an estimate of the amount spent by the Legal Aid Agency on processing exceptional case funding in the 2024-25 financial year, broken down by (a) category of law and (b) case complexity.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The unit cost of processing an application is not specifically tracked or recorded by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA), nor is the operating expenditure relating to exceptional case funding (ECF) recorded separately to general legal aid operating expenditure. Information about the operational costs of administering the legal aid scheme is set out in the LAA’s Annual Report and Accounts.

It is not possible to provide costs relating to, or to make an estimate of the costs relating to, processing an application or any part of the application process or overall operational costs associated with the ECF scheme.

Although the LAA records some information about appeal processing times, it does not distinguish between appeals submitted by clients with legal representatives and those without. Information relating to civil legal aid processing times can be found here and criminal legal aid processing times can be found here.